Mac Pro Performance Using Logic Studio 9

[Analogger]

Hi, new to the forums.

I am running a mac pro with dual quad core 2.26GHz processors and 20GB ram - early 2009.

I use it exclusively for Music Production but have recently found that the processors are struggling when using some newly purchased plugins - namelyU-He Diva and Kontakt 5. Both of these plugins work on just one core while the others are idle and this one core maxes out quite easily.

Is there any way to improve the performance of the mac under these conditions or do I just need to upgrade the system entirely?

Any help would be appreciated.

 

[Ccrew]

Hi, new to the forums.

I am running a mac pro with dual quad core 2.26GHz processors and 20GB ram - early 2009.

I use it exclusively for Music Production but have recently found that the processors are struggling when using some newly purchased plugins - namelyU-He Diva and Kontakt 5. Both of these plugins work on just one core while the others are idle and this one core maxes out quite easily.

Is there any way to improve the performance of the mac under these conditions or do I just need to upgrade the system entirely?

Any help would be appreciated.

I'd contact the plugin makers personally and see whether there's a known issue with multi-core. You shouldn't have to upgrade a computer because a piece of software won't correctly use 7 other cores available to it.

 

[Boneheadxan]

Not sure if this has been fixed in the recent 9.1.6 update, but Logic has had this 'one core overload' bug for a while. Search for the 'Logic Studio one core overload' and you will find some optimisations which may or may not fixed. Can't remember, but it was either on Gearslutz or KVR where I read this a while back. I keep hitting this while mixing.

DIVA and Kontakt5 are both multi-core optimized in other DAWs and both are highly reputable plugin manufacturers.

Try switching between the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Logic.

 

[derbothaus]

Hi, new to the forums.

I am running a mac pro with dual quad core 2.26GHz processors and 20GB ram - early 2009.

I use it exclusively for Music Production but have recently found that the processors are struggling when using some newly purchased plugins - namelyU-He Diva and Kontakt 5. Both of these plugins work on just one core while the others are idle and this one core maxes out quite easily.

Is there any way to improve the performance of the mac under these conditions or do I just need to upgrade the system entirely?

Any help would be appreciated.

The host app Logic is very multicore friendly but plugins do sometimes require higher frequencies than 2.26GHz to get the job done. Some plugin's have to be processed "in-line" and only on a single core. It has been this way forever. Google Logic load distribution, never mind here is Apples KB. I'd wait till the Mac Pro refresh before buying new but you'll probably want to upgrade that 2009 as it was fairly slow unless you had a perfectly multicored workflow. Better as a server or node.
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3161

 

[Sharky II]

In Logic - and most daws - each track or channel uses one core. You can't really distribute an AU's load across multiple cores, nor can you split individual plugins on the same channel, to multiple cores. Even Kontakt, which in standalone mode can be multicore aware, does not distribute stuff when used as an AU/VST.

The problem with the 2.26 is that it simply is too slow - per core - to run the most thirsty plugins these days. You can run hundreds of low overhead plugins that distribute nicely over the 8 cores - but the actual core speed isn't that great, unfortunately.

I have the same issue - i have a 2008 Mac Pro 2.8ghz octo and i can run out of cpu on one core while the other 7 do very little - logic uses the last core to perform in 'live mode' when you select an instrument track. I run a native rig (no hardware monitoring) and run at a 64 sample buffer (SSL MadiXtreme PCIe interface) and running Kontakt with something big ilke Abbey Road Drums, with a 64 buffer and lots of polyphony... it can get nasty. And routing multiple outs from Kontakt/any AU to multiple auxs and throwing plugins on them (i.e a kontakt drum kit routed out in logic with kick/snare/hihat/room all on their own aux).... forget about it. For whatever reason, Logic does all that on ONE CORE... ridiculous.

Diva is brand new and uses a lot of cpu. In order for it to sound so good, Urs has basically said 'yeah... it's cpu hungry, sorry', especially with pad sounds with high polyphony...

Workarounds/solutions - assuming you aren't going to just go out and buy a new Mac Pro:

- Increase your buffer size. If you're just at the mixing stage, throw it all the way up 1024! When composing, you might be OK living with 256 or 128, see how they feel - what are you running now?
- Run in 64-bit mode - it gave me an extra boost in cpu headroom of around 30% in some cases
- Reduce oversampling in Diva, increase it when bouncing (offline)
- Turn off convolution reverbs in Kontakt 5 - they are power hungry. I'm sure Kontakt 5 is worse than 4 for cpu usage... and lower the polyphony
- Make sure that when you're playing back the song in Logic, the Diva/Kontakt/au instrument channel is not selected in the arrange, as logic will record/live arm the track, which will send the cpu usage on the last core to go bananas
- If you have enough RAM, use multiple instances Kontakt with the same patch loaded. This allows each instance of Kontakt to do some of the polyphony, and it'll also distribute these across multiple loads.
- Do not use multiple patches in one Kontakt instance. Again, use one patch per instance of Kontakt. This is a manual way of distributing Kontakt instruments across cores

Other options for you are: upgrade the cpu in your mac pro (whole other subject/thread, but you can get 2010 cpu's and drop them in your machine, if you have the know how), or just buy a newer mac pro like the 6 core 3.33ghz, or whatever the new machines will be. The 2010 are basically over twice as fast, per core.

Hope this helps!

Eddie

 

[seisend]

I just give my two cents to this thread because I own an 8 Core 2.26GHz Mac Pro myself.
I don't use Kontakt 5 but I use tons of Plugins and Synths like Omnisphere, Native Instruments Synths, Arturia Synths and tons of other plugins.

Well, all I want to say is that I have really complex projects running with up to 80 Tracks and it all just flies on my Mac Pro !

You wrote about "processors are struggeling", do you mean you get an overload message ? Are your sound librarys separated on other HD's than your Projects ? I have my Logic and projects installed on a SSD and my Librarys installed on a 3x1TB Raid 0 Partition.

I found buffer rate 256 very good to record. If you feel latency, just use the "Low Latency Mode". Also I'm running Logic always in 64bit Mode.

All this works for me great from sample rates between 44.1 - 96 kHz

Before you upgrade your processors, I suggest you to make some other tests.